Former Pakistan skipper ‘not in favor’ of Hardik Pandya being touted as next T20I skipper

India all-rounder Hardik Pandya has been touted as the next skipper of India’s T20I team. After the Men In Blue’s semifinal loss in the 20-20 World Cup 2022. Since the loss, current India skipper Rohit Sharma has been facing criticism due to his captaincy during the tournament. They have been demanding his sacking from the shortest format of the game. On the other hand, Pandya has been fans’ favorite these days.

Meanwhile, former Pakistan skipper Salman Butt isn’t impressed with the idea of having Pandya as India’s next T20I skipper. The former feels that if Sharma had scored big runs in some games during the World Cup, fans wouldn’t have demanded his sacking. Butt also mentioned Pandya, just like Sharma has tasted success as captain in the Indian T20 League.

“I don’t know who is seeing him as captain and who is watching such dreams. He has talent and has tasted success in the ITL. But even Rohit Sharma has been successful five to six times in the ITL. If he had scored well in a couple of matches (in the T20 World Cup 2022), people wouldn’t have been talking about making this change at the top,” he said.

“In the Asian subcontinent, people start talking about such drastic and big changes rather soon. Not all of them, but quite a few, who probably don’t understand how these things work. Sometimes, just for the sake of giving an opinion, people say, ‘change the captain’,” he added.

Will you change captains of 11 different teams? Salman Butt

The Lahore player further added that 11 teams couldn’t win the World Cup (15 in fact as some teams crashed out in the first round). He feels that if losing a World Cup is the criterion to change a skipper, then all the teams that participated must do the same.

“Only one captain has won the World Cup, the rest of the teams have lost. Will you change the captains of all 11 teams because they lost the World Cup?”, he asserted.